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George Simmons (Adam Sandler) is a middle aged former stand-up comedian turned movie star. Despite his millions he is sad and lonely and most of his recent film work is low-brow and dumb. He is diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia and offered an experimental treatment that has only an eight-percent chance of therapeutic response. Believing he is about to die, he returns to his roots to do stand-up comedy.

Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) is an aspiring stand-up comedian in his twenties who shares an apartment with his two best friends, Mark and Leo (Jason Schwartzman and Jonah Hill). George meets Ira at a small comedy club and hires him as his assistant. Ira becomes one of George's only close relationships. The two travel around the country, often meeting with real life comedians who play themselves and talk about the business of comedy.

George reconnects with his ex-fiancée, Laura (Leslie Mann) who is currently married to Clarke (Eric Bana). George′s physician tells him that the leukemia is in remission. George decides he wants Laura back. Laura invites George and Ira to her house in Marin County while her husband is away on business. George and Ira spend quality time with Laura and her two young daughters. George and Laura sneak off to have sex, but Clarke returns home and there is a huge argument.

The plot of the movie now concerns who Laura will choose, her current husband Clarke who cheats on her, or her former husband George (who also cheated). Ira is not always on George's side in the love triangle, so when it doesn't go George's way in the end, he fires Ira.

Ira returns to his old food-service job. After some time has passed, George attends Ira's stand-up act and sees that his old assistant has become a far more confident performer. The next day, George finds Ira at work and they reconnect as friends, telling each other jokes as equals.

Judd Apatow had expressed his desire to make a stand-up comedian mentor film loosely based on his own early experiences as a struggling performer. He could not come up with an interesting idea, however, since most of his mentors were kind to him. He then thought of making a film about a mentor facing a life crisis, and decided to have his former roommate Adam Sandler play that role. They discussed making the film almost two years prior to production.[12]

Apatow had cast Sandler, Seth Rogen, and Leslie Mann as the three leads in March 2008.[13]Eric Bana, Jonah Hill, and Jason Schwartzman were cast in June 2008 when the title of the film was announced. When asked about the decision to cast Bana, Apatow said that both he and Rogen are fans of his films; Rogen additionally commented they cast him as the husband because he was someone who would be considered an intimidating presence to both Sandler and Rogen.[14] Bana mentioned that he decided to play the character with his native Australian accent so he would be more comfortable improvising.[15] Apatow and Mann's daughters, Maude and Iris Apatow, play the young girls in the film. Both Apatow and Mann state that this casting choice allowed for more natural dialogue for the children, but the girls have not been allowed to actually see the film[16]

Academy Award-winning cinematographer Janusz Kamiński handled the cinematography for the film. Apatow had Sandler, Rogen, and Hill write their own material for routines. Apatow filmed them performing their routines in front of live audiences, using six cameras to capture their performances and audience reactions. Apatow filmed their entire performances, although only five to ten minutes of stand-up footage appear in the film. Hill admitted his performance was not well-received because he has never done stand-up. Additionally, Apatow filmed scenes from Sandler's character's fictional filmography, as well as scenes from Schwartzman's character's fictional television show Yo Teach!, for the film to add realism.[17]

Apatow used an old video of Sandler, from when the two were roommates, in which Sandler makes prank phone calls, and features a young Ben Stiller.

Comedy Central aired a special, "Inside Funny People" on July 20, documenting the making of the film and showing clips of the stand-up. The channel also aired "Funny People: Live" on July 24, which is a live broadcast stand-up of Sandler, Rogen and Hill as part of the film's promotion.

Funny People received mixed to positive reviews from the critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 68%, based on 227 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The site's consensus reads: "Funny People features the requisite humor, as well as considerable emotional depth, resulting in Judd Apatow's most mature film to date."[20] Another review aggregator, Metacritic, gave the film a score of 60 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[21]

Jeffrey Wells from Hollywood Elsewhere received feedback from sources who had seen a test screening, with one source calling it "really funny, a really sweet movie, a lot of veracity...really a brilliant film", comparing it to the works of James L. Brooks.[22]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film 3½ stars of four, calling it "a real movie. That means carefully written dialogue and carefully placed supporting performances — and it's about something. It could have easily been a formula film...but George Simmons learns and changes during his ordeal, and we empathize." It is the highest rating Ebert ever gave an Adam Sandler film, tied with his review for Punch-Drunk Love.[23]Peter Travers of Rolling Stone also praised the film, writing, "Apatow scores by crafting the film equivalent of a stand-up routine that encompasses the joy, pain, anger, loneliness and aching doubt that go into making an audience laugh."[24]Kyle Smith of the New York Post wrote that the film was "one of the most absorbing films of the year."[25]

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one of its mixed reviews, complaining of the film's two-and-a-half-hour running time: "Funny People is...an attempt by Apatow to reconcile the huge success he has become with the up-and-comer he once was. The results run an increasingly exasperating 2½ hours.".[26]

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times complains the film is "irritatingly self-satisfied" and describes the film as "nice" ... "but nice can be murder on comedy and drama alike".[27]

Gene Shalit of NBC's The Today Show disliked the film greatly, stated that it's "A smirk of faithful characters that are making a vanity movie about themselves that keeps not ending for 2 1/2 unendurable hours. Director Judd Apatow wrote the script and it's vulgar, in fact it's ineffable, because without the letter F, he would have no script."[28]

Funny People was commercially released on July 31, 2009 in the United States and Canada. It was distributed to 3,008 theaters, and grossed $8.63 million on its opening day.[2] At the end of its opening weekend, the film had grossed $23.44 million. Funny People, which cost an estimated $75 million to produce, made about $71 million worldwide in theatres.[2] In comparison, Apatow's previous directorial effort, Knocked Up, cost $33 million to produce and made over $219 million in gross receipts, while Sandler's last three movies had all made over $100 million.[29]

Funny People was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the USA on November 24, 2009. There is a one-disc "Unrated & Theatrical" cut and a two-disc "Unrated Edition". The Unrated cut of the film runs at 153 minutes. It was released in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2010, again, on DVD and Blu-ray.[30]